Ace
9/4/20 - What does attraction mean, specifically for people who don't experience sexual attraction? Angela Chen joins us to talk about her book Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society and the Meaning of Sex.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
Ad sales: Midroll
LINKS
Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen
The Invisible Orientation by Julie Sondra Decker
TRANSCRIPT:
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: She's Ann Friedman.
Ann: She is Aminatou Sow. Love saying your name. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Listen, thank you. Thank you very much.
Ann: Also I love the way we get pronouns in that way as well. Just everything is on the table.
Aminatou: Sometimes it all works out Ann. [Laughs]
Ann: You know what? In these unprecedented times. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Oh my gosh. Tell me what are we talking about today?
Ann: Ugh, I'm so excited about today's episode which is about asexuality, Angela Chen's book Ace. The full title is Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex.
[Theme Song]
(1:08)
Ann: I should also say this is not an episode about Big Friendship. Summer of Friendship has concluded.
Aminatou: Thank goodness! Thank goodness!
Ann: Thank goodness we are moving in. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Yes! For all of the salty people who were upset we're back. We're back.
Ann: Wait who was upset? Were you upset? [Laughs]
Aminatou: Regularly scheduled programming. I mean for me. For me. [Laughs] I will only speak for myself. Not that all of the episodes were not amazing; I was just feeling like a degree of self-consciousness about it.
Ann: Right. And also just like we spent July and August in a kind of all friendship all the time mode so I think particularly for you and me we are ready to talk about some other stuff.
Aminatou: Right. I'm ready to focus on nemesis now. Let's move on. No more friendship.
Ann: Oh my god, our nemesis episode could be incredible. We should think about that.
(1:55)
Aminatou: We really should. Do you have a nemesis?
Ann: No I really don't.
Aminatou: Yeah.
Ann: I don't play -- like that is not . . . I understand how the way a nemesis, like in ways that Roxanne Gay has talked about, can be a kind of professional motivator or can be something that is actually kind of healthy or productive. But for me it has just never really applied to how I want to live and work. It's not useful for me.
Aminatou: Oh you mean Shine Theory doesn't make room for nemeses? [Laughs]
Ann: That is an interesting question right? Can you be practicing Shine Theory in the sense that you are invested in your people and also have a nemesis? This is like the outer limits of discussing the theory. What do you think?
Aminatou: I believe I am a nemesis but I do not have a nemesis, you know what I'm saying?
Ann: Ooh, ooh. People are competing with you but you are not competing with anyone else. Yes. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Yeah. I only have the stamina and the interest and also my level of trauma only involves me thinking about myself, like I can't think about other people. So yeah, I just don't really have a nemesis.
Ann: One reason I don't have a nemesis is there's not one person who has everything I want. You know? It's like I see aspects of things that I . . .
Aminatou: Thank you Ann.
Ann: I'm serious! I see aspects of things I want to bring into my life or into my work in lots of different people and projects. And it's like for me to have a nemesis I would have to really covet or feel in competition with one individual and I just . . . maybe that person is out but I have yet to encounter them or their work.
Aminatou: I mean for me that person is out there. It's just me so that's . . . [Laughter]
Ann: Right, you are your own nemesis. I absolutely relate to that, yeah.
Aminatou: I'm my own nemesis. I'm my own black swan. But also here's the truth of it: anyone who could've even been a nemesis for me got neutralized by Shine Theory a long time ago, you know what I mean? So it truly . . . that's actually . . . my favorite friendships are friendships with people where it's like oh yeah, we really didn't like each other at the beginning or there was some kind of unnamed tension and now we're really good friends so it doesn't matter. Because it just goes to show that when you actually know someone and you know the reality of their life that stuff doesn't matter.
(4:20)
Ann: I have to say I'm compelled to point out that we turned even a joke about nemeses into a conversation about friendship and Shine Theory. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Stop it, stop it. Gina cut all of it. Cut all of it. Cut all of it. Thank you.
Ann: Okay. For real though there is a true and genuine topic shift today. We encountered the writer and journalist Angela Chen because an editor we worked with on our book, the fabulous Carrie Fry, recommended that we check out an early draft of Angela Chen's book Ace which is a book about asexuality. It has memoir elements and reporting elements and is also a work of cultural criticism with a strong political bent. We both thought the book was incredible and there were parts of it that thematically overlapped with what we were writing about and we interviewed her for our book. But on the whole it is divergent subject matter, like so excited to say again it is not a friendship episode. I chatted with her about the book which the full title is Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex.
Aminatou: Can't wait to listen to this.
[Interview Starts]
Ann: Angela thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Angela: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Ann: I would love to hear you talk about the moment or the time in your life when you first learned about asexuality and you were like "Oh, this is a thing."
Angela: There were two moments because it took me a couple tries to get it right I think. So the first moment I was in my teens at some point and I went to the AVEN, this website that's kind of the website for asexuality, and it just said an asexual person is a person who doesn't experience sexual attraction. And I was like oh, interesting, good to know. Now it's another [0:06:07]. And then I didn't think about it for probably ten more years. I always respected asexuality. I never thought there was anything weird or bad about it. But reading the definition in no way made me think that it might have anything to do with me. I thought I was like most of my friends at the time a straight woman. I had not had sex yet but I was interested in it and so it just seemed to be something that -- asexuality seemed to be something that was about other people very separate from my life.
(6:40)
And then ten years later after a couple of relationships I started thinking why I had I behaved the way I did in certain relationships? Why did sometimes I feel a little bit removed when other people were talking about sexuality? What were parts of my experience with sexuality that didn't quite align with my friends'? And that was what started me thinking again what is asexuality? Did I maybe not get it right the first time? But between all of that it basically never occurred to me that I was anything but allosexual which is the term for people who aren't asexual.
Ann: Right. And that's so interesting how you can read something and think like oh yeah, that's a thing but it does not map onto my experience. Because one thing your book really brought up for me is we talk a lot about experiences related to sex and attraction being really subjective when it comes to the way we relate to others, like that's why the conversation about consent is so important you know? Or that's why millions of relationship conversations have to do with how we are all experiencing these things very differently. But often we don't extend that to the ways that these labels or experiences are processed internally and personally, you know? And how it's sort of like how do you know that everyone else is seeing what you're seeing when you see the color blue right? It almost is this question about the nature of how we as humans can never fully know each other's experiences. Not to get immediately philosophical about where your book took me but I don't know, I wonder if that resonates for you.
(8:20)
Angela: Absolutely. And I think once you start to think about your own experiences you have to get immediately philosophical. The book is about sexuality and relationships and so on but it's also so much about language, that exact question. So one thing is that it's very confusing because the word asexual is so broad and it includes people who have positive sexual experiences. So I have a lot of empathy for people who are like wait, that's not how language works. Why would you have that be the word? So I get it, it's confusing in that way.
The other thing is we just talk about so many parts of our lives including sexuality in really broad terms. Like when someone says hot what does that really mean? And that was one of the biggest revelations for me is when I was a teenager we'd be like oh this guy is hot. That guy's not hot. But I didn't realize ten years later when I said oh he's hot they were experiencing something like a physical attraction to him and I was like oh he has good hair, you know? It wasn't much different than looking at a painting of someone who was hot. There was no sexual motivator. But there was no way to tell that internal experience was different.
Ann: Gosh, yeah. Then you make this point about language where terms like attraction, sex, and romance are so often conflated in our culture. One thing your book really did for me was to help try to separate those threads because I think like a lot of allosexual people, like a lot of cisgender people, like a lot of heterosexual people, it's been very easy for me to kind of collapse those terms. And I'm wondering about that process for you. How did you start to separate the ideas that attraction does not mean the same thing as sex, does not mean the same things as romance?
(10:10)
Angela: I think for me it was more like I had all these muddy ideas in my head and then once I had this framework presented to me I was like oh, this explains questions I didn't even know I had. So for example Aces separate sexual attraction from aesthetic attraction. So aesthetic attraction is basically you can find someone beautiful without that beauty being a sexual motivator. And now that someone had explained it to me I was like oh, that makes sense because I've always had a physical type. My friends are very familiar with it. It's not like everyone looks the same to me in terms of attractiveness.
Ann: [Laughs]
Angela: And so for a while I was like okay, am I really asexual? Some people do seem hotter to me. What does it mean? So having that framework I was like okay, that makes sense. And in the same way, romantic attraction, once people separated sexual attraction from romantic attraction, I was like yes this makes sense. It makes total sense that you would be romantically attracted to someone even if you don't feel sexually attracted to them. It's not like I thought these things through myself; it's like someone drew this diagram and made it clear to me. Then things in my life started to fall into place.
Ann: What are some of the other terms or labels or clarifications that felt helpful to you as you started to understand and articulate your own identity?
Angela: So the main one was the separation of sexual attraction, romantic attraction, aesthetic attraction. I also thought it was really interesting to think about the difference between sexual attraction and sex drive. We really conflate those two, right? But if you really think about it you can be gay and have a high sex drive. You can be straight and have a low sex drive. There's no reason why those things have to be together, right?
(11:55)
And so thinking about them differently, especially with asexual people who can be asexual and still have a high sex drive which basically means that they can feel horny but they don't want to get other people involved, that was like a light bulb moment and I think many people don't understand that these things are different.
Or one thing is thinking more clearly about the difference between romantic love and platonic love which for most people it's like oh, I know that I'm romantically interested or romantically attracted because I want to have sex with them. It doesn't matter if you actually are having sex with them; just the desire is what separates the two, right?
But for aces many people are indifferent to sex or even averse to sex and they still feel romantically attracted to others. It's this hazy, confusing space and I don't have all the answers for what exactly is the difference but even beginning to make that separation made me question oh, why do we -- why does the separation exist? What would it mean if we thought about it differently? What would it mean if we thought about different types of relationships differently?
Ann: Yeah. You know, we talked a lot about -- you and I -- about attraction while Aminatou and I were writing our book because this was something that we were trying to suss out as it relates to friendship right? Like what does it mean to be very deeply attracted to someone in the sense you want them in your life? You might even be aesthetically attracted to them which is a part of our story. We were like "Oh my gosh, I love her style. I love her taste. I think she's cute." But also this sex piece being missing or this kind of, you know, even in our case even a romantic case being missing and trying to find some new language around attraction. We've had some interesting conversations as we talk about the book with both people who do and don't understand that word can apply in a lot of contexts. I'm wondering about some ideas you had going into your reporting process because there are so many different stories in this book about all the different ways people inhabit their asexual identity. I wonder if you could talk about a story that you heard -- or maybe a couple of them -- that really broadened your own understanding of like huh, I had not really thought about it in this way before.
(14:14)
Angela: I think one story that comes to mind immediately is the story of someone I interviewed whose name is Hunter. And Hunter comes from a very different background that I do. My background is kind of the typical, you know, liberal, I grew up on the coast, I'm not religious at all. Hunter crew up in a very religious family in the Midwest and the way he puts it growing up nobody talks about sex but somehow while no one was talking about sex everyone got the message that sex was good. It was this gift from God as long as you waited until marriage. And he wanted that. He wanted what he thought was a pure connection.
And so when he was in his 20s in college at some point he started training himself to resist temptation and not look at people who might be sexually attractive and he followed all the rules and didn't have sex until he got married when he was 25. And then after that sex didn't turn out to be what he thought it was and he couldn't understand why. For years he really struggled with it. It's not that he struggled with the sex itself, he wasn't repulsed by sex, he struggled with the fact that it wasn't what he expected, that it wasn't as big a deal as he'd been told, and only after he learned about asexuality did it feel to him like all of these parts of his life suddenly made sense. And it made him see his past in a new way too, you know?
(15:42)
He told me that he had these friends who would give into temptation and he'd be like part of me was judgmental. I was like it's so easy to not have sex so why would you take this risk? And I just thought that was so interesting because it was so different because when you think about religious cultures I think many of us who maybe aren't part of that culture immediately think about purity rings and celibacy and that kind of stuff. And for him being raised religious he actually hated asexuality in this really interesting way. So that to me was a story that was unlike many of the ones I'd heard about asexuality before writing the book.
[Ads]
(17:48)
Ann: I've kind of found myself resisting the desire to compare many of the stories in your book to other kinds of LGBTQ coming out stories that I have read and heard in the past. I'm wondering if you have thoughts about that, about how does asexuality fit into this kind of large acronym queer umbrella? I'm curious what that brings up for you.
Angela: I think there's a lot of nuance in the conversation. So I definitely believe that asexuality is part of the umbrella, that aces are queer, but I think there is a discussion about the extent to which people who are asexual but also heteroromantic -- they're attracted to the opposite gender -- are they really queer? Because oftentimes these aces are so straight-passing. So I think still a discussion is happening.
And I think asexuality holds a different space. You know, it's often called the invisible orientation and invisibility in many ways provides protection. I think oftentimes aces don't feel as much pressure to come out. I think that if you are heteroromantic and ace and you're walking down the street holding hands you're not going to be a target. There's a different set of considerations.
At the same time I think that public knowledge of asexuality is not nearly at the level of public knowledge around other parts of the umbrella and I think there are specific challenges associated with coming out as asexual. For example I talk to people who say it's hard for them to come out because it really does feel like you're talking about your sex life. You know, if you're talking about oh, maybe I'm bisexual or maybe I'm gay then it sometimes can feel more like you're talking about who you want to be partnered with. But if you're talking about you're asexual it kind of feels like you're telling people oh, I'm horny or I'm not horny. That kind of feels inappropriate, you know?
Ann: [Laughs] Right. This is how I like to do it or not, yeah.
(19:45)
Angela: Exactly. That can be off-putting for people if they don't understand. And even for me the funny thing is if you Google my name the book will come up and you'll quickly realize I'm asexual. But my parents don't really follow my career so they don't know about it. I don't think I'm out to my parents. I don't know if I really want to talk about this with my parents either, you know? So there's all these interesting other considerations that come along with the stories of what it means to come out as ace and how that's easier in some ways and how in some ways you can just never come out because it can almost be easier not to. Then you can pass in many ways.
Ann: Right. And so for you how does that intersect with politics? In as much as all queer identities are political. When you think about asexuality as it relates to the way we make laws and recognize all the ways of being and doing sexuality and relationships in the world is there something you would like to see taken into consideration if we were really to make asexual people more visible in our politics?
Angela: Absolutely. I think with aces we struggle not necessarily at the level of law. Every once in a while someone will say "Oh some states have these consummation laws where you're not really married unless you've had sex." But in reality I don't think those are the concerns for aces. I think it's more on the level of culture and more on the level of norms than a level of discrimination which has been a fight for other people who are part of the queer umbrella.
So for instance I think the ace perspective and consent, you know, who are sexual in relationships and who's the one who's broken and who's responsible for "fixing" their sex drive, I think that's a big discussion we should be having. And that's not just a discussion for ace people; I think that's a discussion about sexual life that affects everyone. Or when we talk about health and sexuality and there's so many narratives about sex being healthy that somehow morphs into this narrative that not having sex means you're not healthy which is not the same thing.
(21:55)
There's this medicalization of sex where sex is normalized so people try to sell you these pharmaceuticals because you're broken. I think those are the kinds of conversations we need to be changing. That's the kind of activism. Or talking about sex education for people who are in middle school and high school.
I interviewed someone who had blood tests done in high school because she heard all these messages like oh, you will definitely want to have sex. It's like that scene in Mean Girls, you know? You will want sex and you will have it. She felt alienated and said I think I'm sick. I think I have cancer and this is a side-effect of the cancer. It's a side-effect of the tumor. So she thought she was actually going to die. This is the kind of thing that could be fairly easily avoided by incorporating sexuality into sex ed because it's so hidden right now but doesn't have to be. Some changes will take a lot of effort like changing all the drunken sex but some changes like incorporating asexuality into sex ed I don't think would take nearly as much.
Ann: Yeah. I mean as I hear you talk about that I'm really thinking about a lot of the conversations I've had in my own life about how -- air quotes here -- like "sex-positive feminism" affected people I know, particularly people who identify as women and who were maybe raised with this idea exactly like you said that if I'm not really seeing having sex as a site of liberation then I am not doing feminism right. And I feel like when I hear you talk about that I'm like oh yeah, also the culture of our activism and corners of the world that are not just what we may think of as sanctioned sex ed in schools but even those of us who like to think of ourselves as progressive in the ways we talk about this could also do some hard looks at the things we've internalized. I mean I definitely came of age in that kind of soup too.
(23:45)
Angela: Absolutely. And it affected me a lot, you know? And of course I'll be the first to say that sex is political and sex should mean this. And of course repression -- as we know people are shamed out of getting in touch with their sexuality. But somehow that changes the idea that the only reason that maybe you don't love sex is because of some kind of repression or the impact of patriarchy and that's not true. And I think that creating that message can be alienating for people who are really loyal to liberal politics and feminism but feel like they're being asked to perform in a way that doesn't feel natural to them and isn't what they want.
Ann: Ugh, yes. Yes to that. And really to more nuance in general, you know? I have really taken a lot from the -- it feels almost wrong to call it a big tent or large umbrella for all these different ways of experiencing asexuality or living it. Room for nuance, how do we make it? [Laughs]
Angela: Yeah, room for nuance and of course where does the community go now? Because it really has been 20 years since the sexual orientations emerged and for many years the discussion was always we want to be visible. We want to be in the culture. So now I think there's more of a discussion of how visible are we really? How important is the visibility? Where has that gotten us? And do we care about being visible? Do we need to show that we're normal? Should we be more separatists? There's all these continuing, evolving questions around the place of asexuality in politics and culture and where that's going.
Ann: Ugh, yeah. And when you think about places where asexuality does show up in culture now whether it's books or TV or music what comes to mind for you? Are there places where you felt you've seen yourself reflected?
Angela: I don't think there's places I've seen myself reflected. I think, you know, hands down the most impactful example was Todd Chavez from BoJack. You know, you meet another ace person and the first thing you ask is "Oh how did you discover you're ace?" And the second thing you ask is "Oh, what did you think about BoJack Horseman?" It's such a culture touchpoint.
Ann: [Laughs]
(26:00)
Angela: And I'm so grateful for it because it really -- you know, it gave great educational work and I think it made more people realize they were ace who might never have found the community online or in any other way. I still feel dissatisfied with it not because of anything they did wrong but to me it represents how far we still need to go. It had kind of an after-school special feel to it which is completely necessary because you can't have a storyline without setting up the basics of what asexuality is but if you're spending so much time setting up the basics then your storyline can't go that deep I think. And so I want to see it go deeper and I don't know if we're there yet.
Ann: Right. There's sort of like a baseline cultural literacy required to have a non-101 conversation.
Angela: Exactly. And I think -- and I think of this in a vacuum. So one thing I think about a lot is the book A Little Life. Have you read it by any chance?
Ann: I have not read A Little Life but I'm familiar with it.
Angela: Right. So one of the characters, Jude, is I think arguably asexual and he is also a survivor of sexual violence and these things are connected. And because there are people who are asexual who are survivors of sexual violence I think it's good to claim him. But the issue is because there's so many misconceptions about asexuality otherwise if Jude were to somehow become the face of sexuality in modern fiction then many people would get the idea that asexuality is always connected to sexual trauma and then it would just be another misconception that would get around, you know?
Ann: Right.
Angela: Even if you're trying hard to have representation it's so hard when you don't have just the basic bedrock platform of understanding to correct anything that might go wrong. When there's so little representation any one character matters so much.
Ann: Totally. Also on that level of kind of getting beyond the 101 I'm wondering what you see as some of the live debates or issues among you and other ace folks right now. I know you mentioned this question about how visible do we want or need to be but I'm wondering if there are other things happening below that just like "Hello, this is an identity" level or deeper than that I guess I should say.
(28:15)
Angela: So I don't know how much of a discussion this is at large but for me I think there's a question of how much do we need to explain ourselves to allos? And to what extent should we maybe try to change the culture in order to reach more ace people? You know, a subculture -- all subcultures have specific aesthetics, there's specific colors. And it's also very young and many aspects of that mean it's inaccessible to people. You know, because it's so online for example man people who are older might not be able to access it. Or there is also a reputation for asexuality being very white so that can be alienating in other ways.
And so this question of do we -- should we be changing the culture somehow to reach more people or is that not important? How do we balance these things? You know, the importance of the culture that developed versus spreading the culture.
Ann: Right. I mean when I hear questions like that I feel almost like it has to be a both/and right? I know there's only so many hours in the day but those things feel so related to me I guess.
Angela: Yeah absolutely and I think it does have to be a both/and. I don't think aces should cater to allos. I think the question is almost more how do we bring more people in who may be ace themselves? And that means slightly different things. But definitely I don't think the culture needs to change to be diluted or dumbed down but I think at the same time every community, every organization can be doing more to be more inclusive. And of course it isn't just an ace thing right? I think every movement has always struggled with the problem of these questions.
(30:02)
Ann: Right. And when you think about the audience for your book do you think about it as being read by allos like me who are interested but it's also serving this kind of educational function? Do you see it as writing to other aces? I mean I would love to hear you talk about that in the context of what you just said.
Angela: I see it as both. You know, typically I'll say there's the ace audience and there's the allo audience but the funny thing is it's not a binary. Even in the times I've worked publishing excerpts people have reached out to me and they said "Oh, I thought I knew what asexuality was but reading this excerpt made me realize it's actually broader than how it's been portrayed and maybe I'm asexual."
So, you know, there are allo people out there who -- well who think they're allo but maybe they're not allo so it's not a binary. The other thing is I do see them as distinct audiences and I do think there is . . . there's different messages for each. So I'm sure some people who are ace will be like "Well I know the basics. What can I learn from the book?" But even if you're ace that doesn't mean you know everything about what it's like to be certain types of ace. Not that I do either. But for example if you're white maybe you don't know what it's like to be an ace of color or someone who's ace and disabled. And in many places I'm critical of the ace community and what I see as some early attempts at gatekeeping or a lack of diversity so I think there's a lot there. And I've spoken to a lot of ace people about the book and I think they agree it goes beyond the 101.
And for allos too definitely they are an important audience because I think if allos understood the ace lens it would just be another tool, another way to see the world. I hope that when allos are reading the book or even listening to this interview they start thinking oh, so if sexual attraction is different from romantic attraction what does that mean for me? You don't have to be ace to use that model, you know? You don't have to be ace to think about things from the ace framework and you might discover something about yourself that you didn't know or see the world in a new way.
(32:10)
Ann: One thing I want to talk to you about before you go is this concept of queerplatonic because it's something that we -- Aminatou and I were super interested in as we read your book. But I would love to hear you talk about the origin of the term queerplatonic and what it describes.
Angela: Absolutely. So obviously as your book describes -- and I think everyone would agree -- in society friendships do not receive the same amount of respect or centrality in our lives as romance does and that is something that I think many people feel even if they haven't specifically articulated that. And in the ace community where many people are aromantic meaning they might love their friends very much and their family but they're not romantically attracted to others I think there's also a sense of urgency and a sense of alienation.
So in 2010 two journalists came up with the term queerplatonic, S. E. Smith and Kaz, and the idea is that it's about the in-between space. Because in our lives -- and this goes back to language, right -- we have so few terms for the roles people play. We have family member and partner and friends and acquaintance and there's just not much beyond that and all of those are so broad.
So for some people they genuinely feel differently about their queerplatonic partner than the do about either a friend or a romantic partner. But for other people I think it's a name for a new type of bond because when you have a friend you kind of have all these expectations about what a friend is. When you have a romantic partner you have all of these assumptions, whether you explicitly know them or not, about what a romantic partner is supposed to be and supposed to do and what that's supposed to look like. But when you have a queerplatonic partner what is that supposed to look like? I don't know because you don't see that modeled.
(34:00)
And so when people began using the term and using it with other people it was almost a way to affirm the importance of these other relationships in their lives and it was also a way to allow them to build new relationships. So people have been deciding that they're queerplatonic partners. What does that mean? What are the terms of our commitment to each other? What do we call ourselves? How do we want to see each other? How often do we want to see each other? And these are questions that we don't really ask in any relationship other than romantic relationships. It's just so interesting to me to see people borrowing from the language of romance and putting that importance in other parts of their lives and I think queerplatonic is a tool that allows them to do that.
Ann: Yes I love that. And I also found those to be -- I mean there's a lot of beautiful stories in your book but in particular the stories about queerplatonic bonds were really very moving to me. Maybe for obvious reasons given my on-the-record interest. [Laughs] But yeah, they were great. I want to give you a chance to shout out places where listeners can find your work or anything that you might recommend beyond Ace, I mean obviously we're going to tell everyone to buy your book, but anything you would recommend beyond Ace as a resource for learning more about asexuality.
Angela: Absolutely. So the best way to find all my stuff is definitely Twitter which has links to everything else. So my handle is @chengela and in terms of other resources The Invisible Orientation by Julie Sondra Decker. I thought that was a wonderful book. And to those who are more academically inclined to want to get deep into the academic research on this there's a wonderful anthology called Asexuality, queer, and Feminist Perspective. It might be Asexuality, Feminist, and Queer Perspective but if you Google those words it will come up.
Ann: It's a very academic list in the title. [Laughs]
Angela: Yes very much.
Ann: Well Angela thank you so much. Thank you for this book and this conversation.
Angela: Thank you for having a conversation with me. I had a lot of fun.
[Interview Ends]
(36:15)
Aminatou: Ugh, Angela, I love it! I love it so much. We've been thinking and talking through so many of these topics, specifically about desire and identity, and it's so important to have another lens to see the world. I feel like I've just learned so much through Angela's work and I'm so grateful she was on today's show.
Ann: Me too and I also love the real nuance that work like hers insists that we bring to understanding of things that are often flattened. I think a lot about how using the long LGBTQIA acronym is useful in some ways but in other ways does not allow for the kind of exploration into all the ways those different identities are lived and expressed. And so I found this book so immensely valuable in terms of examining some of these questions in my own life and experience even though I do not identify as asexual. So strong plug to read it for people of all identities. The book is out on Tuesday if you're listening to this episode on the day it drops. You can buy it where you buy books, i.e. your independent bookseller. Get it from the library. Again it's called Ace.
Aminatou: I will see you on the Internet, boo-boo.
Ann: See you on the Internet.
Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favorite platforms. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back. You can leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf. Our producer is Jordan Bailey and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.